State ACLU to challenge ban on same-sex marriage

In a statement released this morning, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) announced that they would challenge the state’s ban on same sex marriage by amending a federal lawsuit pending here concerning a ban on second parent adoptions.

The move comes on the same day as similar challenges were announced in Pennsylvania and Virginia and just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor, inwhich the court found that the federal Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman was unconstitutional.

The ACLU is asking North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to agree to allow an additional claim challenging the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples to be added to Fisher-Borne v. Smith, a lawsuit filed last year in Greensboro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina that challenges the state’s ban on second parent adoption, a process by which one partner in an unmarried gay or straight couple adopts the other partner’s biological or adoptive child. If the Attorney General’s office does not agree to the addition of the new claim, the ACLU will petition the court to allow the claim to be added.